Once I get encounters properly sorted out (and once George fixes a few issues on his side of things), starting with a TBR playership in Zyr and sticking to TBR systems will mostly result in running into TBR stations (friendly and hostile alike, though outlaws and pirates will still show up regardless). That might be as late as the 1.8 stable or possibly even a 1.9 alpha, though.

Some TBR playerships will be starters, some won’t. In particular, the Gryphon, Ferry, and Pariah definitely won’t be, the Constable probably won’t be, and the Naginata and Procyon might not be. I’m tempted to cheat outrageously and import a ship from AE Playerships to have a vanilla-esque spread of gunship, flexible ship, and freighter as a starting trio.

I’m glad you like the look of ’em! I wish they meshed a little better with George’s style, but there’s only so much I can do what with him using trueSpace and me using POV-Ray. <.< >.> <.<;

I watched George's most recent Twitch session, and I think the new code that he was discussing (allowing for more randomized/customized spawns based on topology) will greatly help your mod. I'm excited about that.

Bearing in mind that the missile ship is not intended as a starter, and also because I want to try your custom weapons, I decided to swap ships. However, it appears that I'm unable to do this. I imagine it has to do with the ship broker code being updated, as pointed out to me by Relanat relative to VoTG. Here's the Ministry ticket they pointed me to: https://ministry.kronosaur.com/record.hexm?id=82255 .

Several of those topology/encounter changes were because of me, actually. I mean, he probably would have implemented something along those lines eventually, but I did a lot of griping until he did. (And even then I had to open up a new ticket on it because all of the fancy-shmancy new stuff breaks if you have any mods older than API 43.)

The ticket and the inability to change ships are apparently entirely unrelated, from what I can tell. I asked George about it on one of his streams, and he said there was some new code that needs to be present on playerships to make changing ships possible. I just haven’t gotten that far as yet. It’ll be in the next release of TBR.

…Speaking of which. I know I’m not exactly punctual with keeping up with the latest release of the game, but this one in particular is a case of bad timing due to being right around the start of the Holiday season. To make matters worse, I got a Switch for Christmas, so yay for even more distractions for a while… <.< >.> <.<;

I started over with Lambda gunship and gave the Backroads another whirl. The Psi feels well balanced. The linked-fire feature is cool but would be a lot more useful if two different weapons could fire at the same time. I don't find that stacking two of the same weapon is worth the use of an extra device slot, particularly not on a small ship like the Psi. Personally, I'd much rather hold out for dual weapons, and there are plenty of those to be found! The dual Truncheon and dual Sledge were both great finds that served me well. These have good sounds and graphics, seem balanced in terms of availability (rare enough to be excited about; common enough to actually find), are very competitive for their level, and are generally appealing to use. The legion shield effects are also wonderful. "Plink, plink, plink."

If having two entirely different weapons firing at the same time is OP, perhaps there could be another type of restriction. Having the linked fire only work with weapons of the same damage type would be interesting, for instance. I thought about that when I was using the Smartcannon and the Truncheon together with a cannon accelerator.

The Lambda armor has similar benefits and drawbacks to Novaya armor. I think it could be made a little more common at non-Lambda vendors. I was trying to stick to the Lambda armor/shields but couldn't find any to upgrade with from my starting armor. I died several times because my armor/shields were under-leveled. Finally I came across Lambda HQ, where I leapt straight into tier 3 (Beta dampener and Perseus-grade, IIRC). That was a crazy upgrade that left me feeling invincible...

...until I ran into Ares and Ventari two systems after that. That was rather implausible. I imagine this is the sort of thing that will be ironed out with the new topology-based encounters. More generally, since you're committed to using SOTP/CC network maps, I think you could do some thinking about/tinkering with how your maps mesh. You might want to do some cutting and pasting, i.e. remove some of the system spawns from the early game (which I still think is too crowded; finding the Eridani line is pretty tedious) and place them in the mid-game (creating new forks linking to the Ungoverned Territories). It feels to me like there's a large gap between the first and second cluster of Backroads system spawns. Right now I'm between St. Kat's and Sanctuary. I can see teasers far, far ahead but there's only one line to follow to get there.

Faction-based alternative paths to a military ID (a la EP or Renegade) would be much appreciated and seem to make sense story wise. I imagine that's the sort of thing that will have to wait two or three releases, though.

Anywho, thanks again for doing this. I must continue to complement your aesthetic, design, and balance choices. Ships, stations, items, and devices all seem to look and sound great, work well, and have their own unique aspects in both form and function. Take care!